Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (18 page)

He was eager to know what they were, and could not bestow a thought on anything else. The twilight shadows gathered around them.

She rose, having to go out about some shopping; then she reappeared in a bonnet trimmed with velvet, and a black mantle edged with gray fur. He plucked up courage and offered to accompany her.

It was now so dark that one could scarcely see anything. The air was cold, and had an unpleasant odour, due to a heavy fog, which partially blotted out the fronts of the houses. Frédéric inhaled it with delight; for he could feel through the wadding of his coat the form of her arm; and her hand, cased in a chamois glove with two buttons, her little hand which he would have liked to cover with kisses, leaned on his sleeve. Because of the slipperiness of the pavement, they lost their balance a little; it seemed to him as if they were both rocked by the wind in the midst of a cloud.

The glitter of the lamps on the boulevard brought him back to the realities of existence. The opportunity was a good one, there was no time to lose. He gave himself as far as the Rue de Richelieu to declare his love. But almost at that very moment, in front of a china-shop, she stopped abruptly and said to him:

“Here we are. Thanks. On Thursday—night?—as usual.”

The dinners started again; and the more visits he paid at Madame Arnoux
s, the more his lovesickness increased.

The contemplation of this woman had an enervating effect upon him, like the use of a perfume that is too strong. It penetrated into the very depths of his nature, and became almost a kind of habitual sensation, a new mode of existence.

The prostitutes whom he brushed past under the gaslight, the female singers breaking into song, the ladies rising on horseback at full gallop, the shopkeepers‘wives on foot, the grisettes at their windows, all women brought her to mind, either from the effect of their resemblance to her or by the violent contrast. As he walked along by the shops, he gazed at the cashmeres, the laces, and the jewelled eardrops, imagining how they would look draped around her figure, sewn in her corsage, or lighting up her dark hair. In the flower-girls’ baskets the bouquets blossomed for her to choose one as she passed. In the shoemakers’ show-windows the little satin slippers with swan’s-down edges seemed to be waiting for her foot. Every street led towards her house; the hackney-coaches stood in their places to carry her home the more quickly; Paris became associated with her, and the great city, with all its noises, roared around her like an immense orchestra.

When he went into the Jardin des Plantes the sight of a palm-tree carried him off into distant countries. They were travelling together on the backs of dromedaries, under the awnings of elephants, in the cabin of a yacht amongst the blue archipelagoes, or side by side on mules with little bells attached to them who went stumbling through the grass over broken columns. Sometimes he stopped in the Louvre before old paintings; and, his love embracing her even in vanished centuries, he substituted her for the figures in the paintings. Wearing a hennin on her head, she was praying on bended knees before a stained-glass window. Lady Paramount of Castile or Flanders, she remained seated in a starched ruff and a boned bodice with big puff sleeves. Then he saw her descending some wide porphyry staircase in the midst of senators under a dais of ostrich feathers in a gown of brocade. At another time he dreamed of her in yellow silk trousers on the cushions of a harem—and all that was beautiful, the twinkling of the stars, certain melodies the turn of a phrase, the outlines of a face, led him to think about her suddenly and unconsciously.

As for trying to make her his mistress, he was sure that any such attempt would be futile.

One evening, Dittmer, on his arrival, kissed her on the forehead; Lovarias did the same, observing:

“You give me leave—don’t you?—as it is a friend’s privilege?”

Frédéric stammered out:

“It seems to me that we are all friends.”

“Not all old friends!” she returned.

This was a way of rebuffing him beforehand indirectly.

Besides, what was he to do? To tell her that he loved her? No doubt, she would refuse to listen to him or else she would feel indignant and turn him out of the house. But he preferred to submit to even the most painful ordeal rather than run the horrible risk of seeing her no more.

He envied pianists for their talents and soldiers for their scars. He longed for a dangerous attack of sickness, hoping in this way to make her take an interest in him.

One thing astonished him, that he felt in no way jealous of Arnoux; and he could not picture her in his imagination undressed, so natural did her modesty appear, and so far did her sexuality recede into a mysterious background.

Nevertheless, he dreamed of the happiness of living with her, of speaking familiarly with her, of passing his hand lingeringly over her hair or remaining in a kneeling posture on the floor, with both arms clasped round her waist, so as to drink in her soul through his eyes. To accomplish this it would be necessary to conquer Fate; and so, incapable of action, cursing God, and accusing himself of being a coward, he kept moving restlessly within the confines of his passion just as a prisoner keeps moving about in his dungeon. The pangs which he was perpetually enduring were choking him. For hours he would remain quite motionless, or else he would burst into tears; and one day when he had not the strength to restrain his emotion, Deslauriers said to him:

“Why, for goodness sake! what’s the matter with you?”

Frédéric’s nerves were unstrung. Deslauriers did not believe a word of it. At the sight of so much mental anguish, he felt all his old affection reawakening, and he tried to cheer up his friend. A man like him to let himself be depressed, what folly! It was all very well in one’s youth; but, as one grows older, it is only loss of time.

“You are spoiling my Frédéric for me! I want the old one back. The same boy as ever! I liked him! Come, smoke a pipe, old chap! Shake yourself up a little! You’ll drive me mad!”

“It is true,” said Frédéric, “I am a fool!”

The clerk replied:

“Ah! old troubadour, I know well what’s troubling you! A little affair of the heart? Confess it! Bah! One lost, four found instead! We console ourselves for virtuous women with the other sort. Would you like me to introduce you to some women? You have only to come to the Alhambra.” (This was a dance-hall recently opened at the top of the Champs- Elysées, which had gone out of business after its second season due to premature spending on excessive luxuries.) “That’s a place where there seems to be good fun. You can take your friends, if you like. I can even get Regimbart in for you.”

Frédéric did not invite the Citizen. Deslauriers deprived himself of the pleasure of Sénécal’s society. They took only Hussonnet and Cisy along with Dussardier; and the same hackney-coach let the group of five off at the entrance of the Alhambra.

Two Moorish galleries extended on the right and on the left, parallel to one another. The wall of a house opposite occupied the entire background; and the fourth side (that in which the restaurant was) ressembled a Gothic cloister with stained-glass windows. A sort of Chinese roof floated above the platform reserved for the musicians. The ground was covered all over with asphalt; the Venetian lanterns fastened to posts formed, at regular intervals, a crown of many-coloured flames above the heads of the dancers. A pedestal here and there supported a stone basin, from which rose a thin streamlet of water. In the midst of the foliage could be seen plaster statues, and Hebes and Cupid, sticky with oil paint; and the numerous walkways, garnished with sand of a deep yellow, carefully raked, made the garden look much larger than it was in reality.

Students were walking with their mistresses up and down; shop clerks strutted about with canes in their hands; lads fresh from college were smoking their cigars; old men had their dyed beards smoothed out with combs. There were English, Russians, men from South America, and three Orientals in tarbooshes. Lorettes, grisettes,
^t
and loose women had come there in the hope of finding a protector, a lover, a gold coin, or simply for the pleasure of dancing; and their dresses, with tunics of water-green, cherry-red, or violet, swept along, fluttered between the ebony-trees and the lilacs. Nearly all the men’s suits were of a check fabric; some of them had white trousers, in spite of the coolness of the evening. The gas lamps were lit.

Hussonnet was acquainted with a number of the women through his connection with the fashion-journals and the smaller theatres. He sent them kisses with the tips of his fingers, and from time to time he left his friends to go and chat with them.

Deslauriers felt jealous of these playful familiarities. He aggressively approached a tall, fair-haired girl, in a yellow costume. After looking at him with an air of sullenness, she said: “No! I wouldn’t trust you, my good fellow!” and turned on her heel.

His next attack was on a stout brunette, who apparently was a little mad; for she jumped at the very first word he spoke to her, threatening, if he went any further, to call the police. Deslauriers made an effort to laugh; then, coming across a little woman sitting by herself under a gas-lamp, he asked her to be his partner in a quadrille.

The musicians, perched on the platform like apes, kept scraping and blowing away with intensity. The conductor, standing up, kept beating time mechanically. The dancers were crowded together and enjoyed themselves thoroughly. The bonnet-strings, getting loose, rubbed against the cravats; boots disappeared under petticoats; and all this bouncing went on to the accompaniment of the music. Deslauriers hugged the little woman, and, seized with the delirium of the cancan, whirled about, like a big marionnette, in the midst of the dancers. Cisy and Deslauriers were still promenading up and down. The young aristocrat kept ogling the girls, and, in spite of the clerk’s exhortations, did not venture to talk to them, having an idea in his head that in the rooms of these sorts of women there was always “a man hidden in the armoire with a pistol who would come out of it and force you to sign a check over to him.”

They came back and joined Frédéric. Deslauriers had stopped dancing; and they were all asking themselves how they were to finish up the evening, when Hussonnet exclaimed:

“Look! Here’s the Marquise d’Amaëgui!”

The person referred to was a pale woman with a turned up nose, mittens up to her elbows, and big black curls hanging down the sides of her cheeks, like two dog’s ears. Hussonnet said to her:

“We ought to organise a little fête at your house—a sort of Oriental rout. Try to collect some of your friends here for these French cavaliers. Well, what is annoying you? Are you going to wait for your hidalgo?”

The Andalusian hung her head: being well aware of the penny-pinching habits of her friend, she was afraid of having to pay for any refreshments he ordered. When, finally, she let the word “money” slip from her, Cisy offered five napoleons—all he had in his purse; and so it was settled. But Frédéric had disappeared.

He thought he had recognised the voice of Arnoux, and got a glimpse of a woman’s hat; and accordingly he hastened towards a grove which was not far off

Mademoiselle Vatnaz was alone there with Arnoux.

“Excuse me! Am I in the way?”

“Not in the least!” returned the art-dealer.

Frédéric, from the closing words of their conversation, understood that Arnoux had come to the Alhambra to talk over a pressing matter of business with Mademoiselle Vatnaz; and it was evident that he was not completely reassured, for he said to her, with some uneasiness:

“Are you quite sure?”

“Perfectly certain! You are loved. Ah! what a man you are!”

And she assumed a pouting look, pushing out her big lips, so red that they seemed tinged with blood. But she had wonderful eyes, of a tawny hue, with specks of gold in the pupils, full of vivacity, love and sensuality. They illuminated, like lamps, the rather yellow tint of her thin face. Arnoux seemed to enjoy her refusals. He stooped over her, saying:

“You are sweet—give me a kiss!”

She took him by the ears, and pressed her lips against his forehead.

At that moment the dancing stopped; and in the conductor’s place appeared a handsome young man, rather portly, with a waxen complexion. He had long black hair, which he wore in a Christ-like fashion and a blue velvet waistcoat embroidered with large gold palm-branches. He looked as proud as a peacock, and as stupid as a turkey; and, having bowed to the audience, he began a little song. A villager was supposed to be giving an account of his journey to the capital. The singer used the dialect of Lower Normandy, and played the part of a drunken man. The refrain—was greeted with enthusiastic stampings of feet. Delmas, “a vocalist who sang with expression,” was too shrewd to let the excitement of his listeners cool. A guitar was quickly handed to him and he wailed a ballad entitled “The Albanian Girl’s Brother.”